Finally!! (Zenfolio offers comments)

For several years I used PBase as my photo gallery (in fact, the gallery still exist at http://pbase.com/rboles). One of the things I really liked about PBase was the ability of people to leave comments about a photo or a gallery. I loved the feedback from family, friends, even total strangers who stumbled onto my work.

The feature even led to my first "published" work. The prestigious Field Museum in Chicago used one of my images of the Betatakin ruin in Arizona for an exhibit they have been running on Native American tribes. (It was a great thrill for me to visit the museum during a business trip and see my work there).

When I signed up at Zenfolio a year ago, the comments feature was not available, but was listed as Coming Soon. It was an issue with me that this feature was not yet available, but based on the status I went ahead and signed up. Zenfolio had a lot of things going for it over PBase - the biggest being unlimited storage sizes. I could keep full-size images there, which provided extra piece of mind. I back up my work to protect from a harddrive crash, but in the event of a fire/flood/etc I would be screwed. Now at least my best images are available somewhere else (even if they aren't the original files). I also really liked the look and feel of the galleries and slideshows, and the integrated printing with Mpix.

My 1 year subscription with Zenfolio just ended a few days ago. I reluctantly renewed, but was very angry that the promised comments feature was still not available.

Today, Christmas came early! Comments are here. I am thrilled. Now I just have to wait until someone leaves me a comment. Cue Jeopardy music. (and cue it for this blog as well).

-Rodney

More HDR

Earlier, I posted an HDR photo taken at Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse near Acadia National Park. This was not actually my first attempt (in post) to create an HDR, although that picture was taken first. When I was shooting at Bass Harbor, I didn't set out to create an HDR. It wasn't until I was leaving the site that the thought hit me. I mistakenly thought I'd taken enough varying exposures of the same scene to get an HDR. It wasn't until I started looking at my shots that I realized that while I had several shots of a properly exposed sky and several other shots of a properly exposed lighthouse and cliffs, I did not have any framed the same way suitable to creating the effect I wanted just with the Photomatix HDR software. More on that in a bit.

I arrived at Pemaquid Pt a few days later, anxious to do things right. I scouted the site and found a couple of vantage points I liked. I then waited patiently for sun to "do it's thing". I was a little worried about the sky. It looked like it might be a complete dud. But luckily it kept changing and changing. The biggest challenge after that became all of the damn people. I got so tired of waiting for folks to get out of the shot that I decided to go ahead and take a few shots with a person in them.

In the end, the shots with the person created my favorite picture of the scene. I love the texture and the lines in the picture. And unlike many HDR pictures, it still remains faithful to reality.

I tried a different angle, which I ended up not liking quite as much. And the sky decided it wanted to start showing off. While I love the result, I can't help thinking that it just doesn't look quite as realistic as the first picture. Still, I really like the result, and have had some people tell me it is their favorite of the two.

After getting back home, I downloaded the (free) Photomatix trial. I don't think I lasted 24 hours before I was hooked and sending them payment for the key. I was slow to post -process the rest of my Maine and New Hampshire trip. I just have to be in the right mood to sort through hundreds of pictures and do the digital darkroom thing. But slowly it was coming together. I was really frustrated with myself that I hadn't gotten what I wanted at Bass Head. I tried to create an HDR with what I had. The results for the lighthouse and cliff was stunning. But the sky was blown in all the original shots, and the HDR of that was gray with weird lines in it.

I decided to turn to Photoshop. Now, I'm not very advanced in PS. Until Aperture came out, I used it heavily, but only for Adjustment layer sorts of things. Never anything complex. But I did a bit of research and decided to apply what I'd learned. (I also decided to sign up for an all day class in the new year).

I started with the tiff file output of Photomatix, then extracted the lighthouse, trees, and cliffs. Then I tried adding a dramatic sky from another picture I'd taken. It just didn't work. The trees on the left are heavily backlit and there was just no way to make things look natural. So I started over. I got a much better extraction the second time. And most importantly, I decided to use a sky exposure from the same shoot. It didn't match up with the picture, but that turned out to not be a problem. Using the free transform tool in PS, I was able to adjust the sky picture to the image. The sun matched up to the backlit trees. I adjusted the brightness slightly to match the trees on the right (and had to do a tad of burning in one spot).

I was very pleased with the result (see the earlier post). To me, the sky (as it should) looks very natural. And that helped make the overall HDR look more natural. Yeah, it may not be an overly dramatic sky, but that is probably for the best, as that could overshadow the lighthouse and cliffs.

All in all, the entire experience has been extremely educational for me. I can't wait to do this more. Really makes me want to travel back to the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley and try the HDR thing there.

-Rodney

Off-Camera Flash and Connor's First Solid Food

My wife called me the other night at work and told me she wanted to try to feed our son his first solid food. She wanted to know if I wanted her to wait for me to be home. I said "Of course!" and rushed home.

I decided I wanted a good picture of it. I haven't been happy with the flash pictures of him using my speedlight attached to the hot shoe of the camera. His eyes are always open way too much in those pics. I grabber my umbrella and stand and threw the speedlight (a Nikon SB-600) on it. Selected my "Flash" custom setting bank on my Nikon D300 and snapped a few shots while the little one made a mess with his rice cereal.

This one is my favorite. Flash is off to the bottom right, shot into my silver reflective umbrella. Lens is the exceptional Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 (the perfect match to the D300 for portraits).

Hopefully he'll get used to all this camera gear. I've started him young.

Ron's Wedding

My friend and former coworker Ron got married this past weekend. I decided to bring my camera and speedlight and take a few pics. At the ceremony I was going to try to get a few shots with my 18-200mm VR (image stabilized) lens indoor without flash. I had bumped the ISO up to 1600 for this. Then the preacher informed us no cameras. No problem.

Except that I forgot to change my ISO afterward. Shot a bunch of flash shots at ISO 1600. Stupid, stupid. Oh well, it happens. At least the camera has much, much better ISO performance than my old D70s.

Full gallery at:

http://rodneyboles.zenfolio.com/p519528035.

- Rodney

Maine and New Hampshire

Back in October we traveled to New England for a vacation before my wife had to return from maternity leave. So many beautiful things to see. I've been slowly getting pictures post-processed and uploaded to the gallery. Not quite done yet, but getting close. Pretty excited by some of the images. This was my first time doing any High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography, and I'm quite excited with the outcome, such as the attached picture.

The full gallery (well, galleries - one for Maine, one for NH) available here:

http://rodneyboles.zenfolio.com/f992603041

-Rodney

Yay! My first blog post.

This blog is a companion piece to my online photography gallery:

http://rodneyboles.zenfolio.com

Enjoy!
-Rodney